Bob's FuryBusa Site

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Ah, here we go again! Hot on the heels of the MegaBlade and the Ultima GTR comes my latest project, the FuryBusa.

A Cunning Plan

The MegaBlade was my first kitcar, and was tremendous fun. Drawbacks were that it was too noisy to take on most circuits (107dBA) and it had the aerodynamics of a brick. It also had relatively low spec shocks, and needed a quick rack. The Ultima was never intended as a track car (a bit too expensive, again too noisy and a tight squeeze for me with a helmet). I did have a fabulous trip down to Le Mans in it, but I missed having a track car and wanted something a bit more practical as a road car. At the time I was using an Evo VII as my daily driver. So, the cunning plan was to sell all three cars, buy a sensible daily driver, get a nice sports car for the road, then build another very track focussed kitcar. The MegaBlade was sold in August 2004, the Ultima in December and the Evo in early January 2005. I bought a Mondeo diesel estate in August 2004 and took delivery of a shiny new Porsche 911 GT3 in December 2004 and set to work planning the next build.

Decisions, decisions ...

The first decision to make was which kit to build. I wanted something light that handled well, and wanted to go with bike engined power again. The two main candidates were the Fisher Fury and the Stuart Taylor Motorsport Phoenix. These kits do share some common genes, and both have proven track records featuring regularly in the 750 Motor Club RGB Series. Some asking around suggested that although the two cars are very similar, the Phoenix is actually smaller than the Fury. The series winning Phoenix was on display at Autosport International and indeed the cockpit did look very narrow. At the show I had a chat with Martin Bell from the Kitcar Workshop, who are agents for Fisher Sportscars. He felt confident I could be accommodated comfortably in a Fury, and I arranged to visit the factory in Northants a couple of weeks later.

Factory Visit

I managed to combine a business trip with a visit to the Kitcar Workshop on 21st January. Martin was as ever extremely friendly and helpful, and showed me round the partly constructed cars in the unit. Sitting in a part completed chassis suggested that with the pedal box positioned as far down the footwell as it could go and using a foam seat I'd have ample legroom with no need for any chassis modifications.

We discussed engines - my main options being a Yamaha R1 engine or a Suzuki Hayabusa. The R1 is cheaper, lighter and doesn't need dry sumping, but ultimately lacks the outright torque and power of the Hayabusa. Martin tended to favour the R1 as it's cheaper, makes for a simpler build and the performance isn't far short of the 'Busa. So I paid a deposit and went on my way.

The Specification

A couple of days later I received a spreadsheet via email which detailed all the options for my spec. This was very detailed, very clear and made it very easy to price things up - a marked contrast with Ultima, who seem to have a few issues on the pricing transparency front! I had a few queries, and these were all dealt with promptly by Martin, with amended spreadsheets arriving every few days. The discussion stared focussing on the merits of going for the lowered race chassis, lighter bodywork etc. It went quiet for a week or two, and I wondered if Martin was away. A quick email confirmed that he'd been tied up and had got behind with his emails. He suggested passing me on to Gordon Milner who in addition to handling most of the sales also drives the Kitcar Workshop's race car. This was where things started to take a turn for the worse! ;-)

Gordon rang me to discuss exactly what the car was intended for and to cut a long story short after an hour on the phone with him the spec seemed to have moved on to the tune of about £6,000!

Gordon was actually extremely helpful and although it would seem on the face of it that he's a slivery tongued salesman, it's actually not so. He just did an extremely effective job at helping me tease out exactly what I wanted from the car. The first point he made was that an R1 engined car wouldn't really move the game on all that far for me from my Westfield MegaBlade. The second was that I had said I wanted to build the car so that it would be eligible for the 750MC RGB series. Gordon spent some time talking this through with me, and this basically firmed up my aspirations to have a go at racing the car. He explained that although an R1 engined car would be good fun and an extremely accomplished track car, it didn't fit in very well with the class structure in the RGB series, and would be in Class A with the 'Busas etc.

So, out with the R1 and in with the 'Busa and dry sump etc. The rest of the discussion centred around whether I wanted to build the car down to a price or whether I wanted to go for it and build it to a high spec. The single largest item here was the choice of diff - sticking with the Freelander LSD in conjunction with an electric reverse or whether to spend more on the newly developed Muffet diff which in addition to having an integral reverse also features swappable gear ratios. It became clear to me that to skimp on things would be false economy and that I'd probably regret it and end up wasting money by upgrading things later. So the final spec is a full race chassis with cage and side impact protection, Hayabusa engine with dry sump, Muffet diff, DigiDash etc. Latest news is that the chassis should be with in the week of 15th April.

Latest Update

Spoke to Martin Bell this week and although my chassis has arrived, I won't be having it for a little while. It turns out that Martin's been negotiating for some time with Fisher Sportscars, and is now an equal partner in the business. This means that he now has more influence on aspects of the car, including the chassis. Basically what he wants to do is make some modifications to my chassis and send it back to be used as a guide for future chassis production. So I'll be having a new chassis which will be the first of the new design.

It looks like there will also be some new body moulds being made, so I might also have improved body panels. All this will put my delivery back to early May, but I've had no reason not to trust Martin so far and waiting a further 2-3 weeks should hopefully be well worth it.